Or
by Pandora Beardsley
Summary: The same day her brother is sold into service as a telbun, a young woman begins to spill her thoughts out in journal form. The rest is non-fiction.
1. Chapter 1

**Note:** This was originally started for the 2009 Dear Diary Challenge on A Certain Star Wars Message Board.

* * *

Today my brother (or the boy who, once upon a time, was my brother) was sold as a telbun. He belongs to Gailesia Darsk now. Oh, I remember her from the few times I met her. She had fragile snow-rose skin, and the green eyes her mother chose for her to have before she even existed. She's pretty, and she might be reasonably intelligent, but mostly, she's nice. The second time, she gave me a dust-grey stuffed cat that my mother, of course, made me return to her only the next day. When I kicked her leg, on purpose, just to see if I could, she smiled. It was her younger brother who chased me through the garden, slapping through the air at my legs with his ornamental riding whip.

Anyhow, my mother told me the Matriarch presented him to her on the first night of her birthday games. She's been married for over a year now, so it was time.

That day I kicked Gailesia, I was wearing my black soldier girl military boots. I know preferred them, especially compared to those candy-pink shoes my mother had bought for me. I was several gawky inches taller than she was. I had wanted (even if it was only for that one mean, snarling moment) to hurt her, to bruise her.

Her eyes had burned with a candle-lit glow, and she blinked. I have to continue to remember that— along with the whining sharp cuts that smug brat left on the backs of my legs. I was thirteen, and she was fifteen. It would turn out to be the last time I saw her.

That makes me sound much tougher than I really was. I should admit to that—even here, where I could go ahead and lie, instead of revealing every single thing. Most of the time, while I might have wished I was that way, I was actually quiet. I suppose that I still am. The matriarch would have assumed—like my teachers, and the rich cooing nice ladies on the social board—that meant I was tractable and sweet-minded. I know, at least now, when all that has faded into a dreamed memory, that I was afraid they might be right.

I've heard that my brother looks like me. Well, I suppose that would be the obvious and expected thing, thanks to genetics. I might be intelligent or clever enough, but I have always been known first, and mostly, for being pretty.

I know that he supposedly, allegedly, looks like me. But I don't know one other thing about him. Of course, I don't have any memories of him—I was only two years old when he was born, and then taken away to the training house, and I can't remember anything from back then. I can only wonder what he has used for a name. I've never known what my parents called him in the week of days they still had him.

There isn't much else that I can say about him. I don't know why I've written all this down, and perhaps I don't have to. Oh, my mother knew what to say, but she would. They have already used their part of the compensation to have their old white skeleton droid scrapped, and have hired a slum girl to look after the house. All their friends are ooohing.

It wasn't until after I had (with happy relief, and almost soon enough) hung up that I wished I could have gone back for that droid. It must have already been at the scrapyard, but I always see it in the kitchen, in the rained-grey light, in the mornings when I left for school, while my mother was still drowned away in sleep.

I would fly, that easily, and that fast, over the hundreds of kilometers to the city where my parents insist on living. I have always been good at flying in my dreams—including that one where I landed on the thick snow on a tall wind-burned mountain that must only exist in my mind. But I knew, as I do now, that I would never have done it. Because I can't.


	2. Chapter 2

I've never been any good at keeping a journal. Oh, I can write well enough, when I have to write up reviews for the stern and proper and dull D. at work—and when I was still at university, several years ago, I wrote more than a few essays. But that would be it. My father did gave me that lavenderpink writing datapad when I was twelve, but I only wrote a few loose sentences of a story, and then well, obviously, I stopped. And I realized (while I was looking over a shipment of ancient books, so old the paper was made from trees, for the secure collection) that I have never wanted to. Yes, we received another new edition of Philomen Meek's collected diary—as this dear, sweet, and safe journal already knows.

Philomen Meek. She was born with shriveled doll legs and a weak heart, and spent most of her life hiding inside her tower room, that room with the famous window where she wrote her diaries, the thousands of pages filled with words that describe, and I quote—"a world she could only watch as though it were a play acted out for her entertainment." Her elder brother and sister became famous (and still remembered and known) poets, but she just wrote, and wrote, and wrote in her diary.

I think I have always avoid writing a journal just to make certain that I never, and ever, end up like Philomen Meek.

Obviously, that is _not_ what my grade eleven literature teacher wanted me to think.

Of course, she isn't the only person famous for writing a diary, or heaps of letters in the times when people still bothered with that, that are now stored in this archive. But I've never had any interest in reading them—and not even because I prefer stories to be lies. I would think that journals are stories meant only for the person who wrote them.

But since I needn't worry about this being found, or since I'm writing with my own fair, if shaking sloppy, hand, being read if it were, I think I can continue.

Though I am not, not, not going to write about my mother. I was reading over what I wrote several days, and I was appalled to see how many times I mentioned her. And I don't want to believe I was so sentimental, so moon-eyed, over my parents' droid—but I was, and I wrote about it, and it all felt false, and wrong. But I know that dream was quite real—

Anyhow, I shall write about something else. I'll start with the book I bought today while I was wandering the university district. I've heard of the author for several years, and this novella, but this will be the first time I've read their work. Oh, and I might have a red, boyishly strong drink before I use the time to read it, to make up for the five minutes I had to spend before I could leave work listening to D. blah blah blah. It's that exciting.

* * *

There isn't much to say, and less to write, but since I'm sitting at my desk with nothing to do, and since that will continue for the next few hours, I'm going to write it anyway. I have started reading the book I mentioned to myself, and this journal, last week. Alas, I've only read through about twenty pages, most of it when I was here right at my desk. It's all right—but that is all it is. Most books are like that. But it is set in a minor city on Lis that I have never seen even mentioned in a work of fiction before. You know. Most stories stay in that one special, important, starlight glittering city, the one and only city on every world that everyone has heard of, the one everyone longs to escape to.

I had heard of this city, but it was only as a tiny word lost in the globe-map. It's funny, and normal—I have never been to Lis (which was also, in a coincidence, the world Philomen Meek never left), and I don't expect that I ever will.

Most of the books in the archives, and in the main collection, are from other worlds. I can think of a few Kuati authors, one of whom lived in this city, but only a few. Of course, that could be because people here are too busy making ships for words, words, words.

Ha, ha. Then I must be able to write this because my father might have lived here for years, but he is still an off-worlder.

And I noticed that Ketzia just came drifting in. She must be eight, or it could be nine, months into her pregnancy, and she can still drift, even though she has to pause to sigh out her breath, and her cheeks are a flushed velvet-warm pink. She must not have anything to do either, and she came here to talk with me. And she will want to know what I'm writing. So I had better have this finished, and hidden away, before she comes over.


	3. Chapter 3

Someone left a congratulations note on my desk at work. It must have been there for days, because it was slipped underneath the heavy reference book on the corner I only use to keep my detail-lamp on. I was not (and am not) pleased. I don't want the people at work, including the ones I would say I like, to know about my personal life. I would never tell them about my brother. But instead of ripping it in half, and tossing it, I just had to open it and look. It was made of thick, likely handmade, and expensive cream-pale paper. There was no message, or, and rather conveniently, a signed name.

Only the printed finger-wagging: _Rejoice at your family's good fortune_.

That was when I knew it couldn't have been D. She would have given me the note in person, with sweet, yet condescending, smile. And, well, even if she had been too discreet to leave her name, it would have smelled of her book-dust perfume.

It only smelled like paper—the paper, I should add, that none of co-workers could have afforded. I should have still tossed it, _especially_ as this person couldn't bother to sign it. But instead I pushed it back into place under the reference book, and then, only minutes later, I hid it at the bottom of the one drawer I (almost) never use. But though I want, and I even hope, to forget about it, I know I won't. There's a reason I've written about it.

When I had my break, I stopped by the reference desk. Ketzia was watching the door, her hair lit up in the nightlight glow from the shelves of holobooks. I tried to find out, casually and discreetly, if she had seen anything. But I didn't figure out the right questions to ask, and I don't think she knew what I was talking about.

Well, I couldn't expect her (or Roderick, who I spoke with later) to remember the people they had seen near my desk in the past fortnight. I know I wouldn't have.

Oh, and (since I may as well change to another, if related, subject), my parents have sent me my part of the compensation, which happens to be more money than I have ever made in one Imperial Center year. It is, as that cliché on the note said, _my good fortune_. I haven't spent any of it. But I have been looking around, though mostly in a lazy, aimless way, for another, better flat. It has certainly been time for a while.

* * *

I've got something.

Well: it would only be that my flat was so cold this morning that I had hurry in a hopping trot across the ice-paved floor. The old lady has done it again. My face feels like a porcelain mask, thanks to the little blood-red pill I had to take for my sinuses. Oh, I should have moved out months ago. I could make up excuses for why, and how, I am only getting around to it now, but I don't want to think about it that much.


	4. Chapter 4

There is still some room left on this page of paper (I meant flimsy, with its bright plastic smell), so I'll see what I have to write. I'm sitting on the floor in my flat, surrounded by packs, and—alas, and very sadly, only half-packed—boxes. Yes, I'm moving into another flat, and not the first one I visited, in three days. I keep putting stuff, including endless music discs, and holobooks, and clothing I oughtn't to have bought, into boxes, and there's still more. And I haven' t found anyone to help me move the furniture, especially the bed, with the antique frame from the mother's aunt, and the very new mattress.

It is a bed—as I feel obligated, and petty, enough to mention. Last night, when I was bored, I read most of a story set on an imaginary planet in the unknown, and fierce!, and mysterious! regions, where they apparently refer to beds as sleeping platforms. Either that, or the author thought it would sound more exotic if they did.

Obviously, I believe in calling a bed a bed.

Anyhow, the whole flat feels odd. I don't know how to describe it, even though only every place I've lived has been this way when I'm preparing to leave. The air has this numbed, echoing-empty quality. I try not to think about it too much. I have had music playing that I only notice enough to hear part of the time, but it's enough. I had take-out for lunch, and the leftovers for dinner, from the Alderaanian place. I have eaten more Alderaanian food than I have our own local, and planet-wide, delicacies.

There is something else, but I don't know how to write about it. Perhaps I'll figure it out later. Perhaps it would be better if I never do.

I will say that I haven't received another anonymous, and annoying, note at work—and yes, I have had to wonder if I would. And ( _this next section has been blacked out_ ).

But I'm using up the last inches of space on this flimsy (and continue to do so with each word, and each aside) so I shall finish up, and flit, and resume all this on a new sheet.


	5. Chapter 5

So I've moved, finally and successfully, into my new flat. It's on the third storey of an old stone building that used to be a mansion. The family who owned it lost it, and everything else, when they went bankrupt (a fate worse than even death for the aristocrats). Apparently, one of their sons had stolen several designs from the local elite house. The rental agent told me that only minutes into the tour, or I wouldn't know. I didn't much care, but—well, obviously—other people must, and enough for it to be a selling point.

This was the suite for one of the eldest daughters. There is a little room near the back that is right size for a study, or a child's bedroom. It had a rounded window seat, but I think that may be from the recent remodeling. And I know, I just know, what it was meant for when that spoiled and long dead girl lived here. It was the telbun's room.

Perhaps for that reason, I don't know what I want to do with it. I haven't even stored any of the numerous unpacked boxes in there.

That is related to the reason I started writing this entry, and why I bought a package of writing paper from that one tiny pretentious store near the university.

I was looking through my desk at work yesterday during another lull. I was still irritated from having to deal with that one moon-eyed woman Ketzia would have assisted if she hadn't been, you know, taking time off to give birth. I was irritated enough that when I thought of that note—and oh yes, dear journal, dear sheet of paper, you know which one—I banged open the drawer and snatched it out to finally get rid of it.

But first, I just had to open it for one last look. I have never been good at resisting that sort of impulse. And that was when I found it—a tiny moth wing slip of paper, tucked down into the crease of the envelope. It was no wonder I hadn't seen it before. It nearly fluttered out of my fingers as I unfolded it, and read the row of words printed inside.

I don't need to get it back out to remember what it said. I don't need to write it down again here. It was only one sentence: _The moon has two faces_.

It sounds like a fragment from a random poem, or a piece of nonsense—but I don't think that it is. It could be, it must be, one of the messages Pallas sends out. You know who they are, though I haven't heard a single whispered rumor since university. They have worked underground, and outside history textbooks, for over two hundred years, without managing one iota of social change. But they have existed. Most people tend to (nervously) mock them, but my father always taught me not to. I've heard that Senator Danu used to work with them when he was in law school, and that says more than enough.

Now, I have to wait and see if they will contact me again. Until then, I can only look through this message to find out what they wanted me to know.


	6. Chapter 6

Once again, I have nothing to do while I sit at my desk, so I might have as well write. And well: I do keep some paper here for that purpose. I would like to appear busy, since that one matron—the plump stunted brown bird one, who shows up at least once a week, but has yet to learn how to locate a book—has come in. Andraste is at the reference desk, and she tells people (with this pouting glare) to look it up themselves. Sometimes I like Andraste, but today has not been one of those times.

D. is talking and hahahaing with one of her friends nearby. I am glad she's distracted, but it's getting hard to concentrate enough to actually write.

I'll just have to return to my secret and thrilling subjects later.

Maybe I should attempt to finish reading this book by the end of my shift.

Oh, Ketzia had the baby. She had been hoping, and wishing on the northern cross star, that it would be a girl, but it has turned out to be a boy. I don't know, and of course, I can't know, if she had an actual reason to think a scout from the training house was even looking into her—only that she has kept him. Andraste showed me a holoshot, and he looks like a baby, with wrinkled blushed-red skin. I don't know what else I was meant to see—

D. is stalking over in my direction, so I had better hide this away before she can think I'm sneaking creative time on the job. The shock, the horror.

* * *

It turns out that the message Pallas left does come from a poem. I found it almost straight away when I was clicking through an anthology of Kuati poetry from the main public collection. This is a book I had assigned for a class at university—but I didn't read the poem for class, or for free time, until now. It was written over twenty thousand years ago by Aina, a woman who is only remembered as her name. The moon is, literally, our own largest moon, Liin, but it's mostly a metaphor for a man.

Oh, you know: He's beautiful, with space-black eyes and pale skin. He smiles as he tucks his little knife into your heart. He's cunning. He's demure. His skin feels as cold and bright as moonlight when you attempt to touch him.

I can only wonder if Aina had any idea how many poets would imitate her.

Probably not.

This could mean that a man I know—or a man I haven't yet met—is more than what I notice about him. But that might just be the obvious, literary meaning. It could be something else, something I haven't been able to see. I don't know.

* * *

Or (as I thought last night, in a half-dreamed daze I'm surprised I remember well enough to write down) sometimes a moon is merely a moon.

I'm at work again, and D. is telling the assistant director (a prim and sterling old virgin who has devoted her life to a variety of committees, and that's all I need to write about her) about how she's far too busy and important with her job, and with her three or so children, to actually read through a book. She sounds actually smug about it, and really. She works at an archives. I don't think she should be _bragging_ about that.


	7. Chapter 7

This had not been (I write, deciding to be understated for once) a good week. I'm not certain I want to describe it, even in the paper of this journal. But I will be honest, too honest, and note that I have slept as much as I could, because I couldn't bear to be awake. I would get into bed, and roll over in the tangled, stale warm sheets, and wait for my mind to shut off for another long dull nap. Then when I got up, I would feel as though I were still asleep, and inside the blurred light of a dream. But even though I must have had dreams when I was asleep, I don't have to remember any of them now.

There was one moment when I almost decided that I wouldn't write in here again, and that would be _forever_. I don't know how I got past that, but somehow, through force of will, I have. After all, I'm writing this down now.

It shouldn't be this easy to feel exactly the way I did when I was twelve, and sixteen, when I was filled with constant, hopeless, stupid rage.

But that doesn't matter. It turns out that nothing has changed.

But I could have felt much worse, and I do feel (somewhat, cautiously) better now. I wanted to take a nap after work, and then especially after dinner, but I made myself stay awake, even though my eyes felt like burnt-out black holes. Yesterday, I dyed my hair a dark nightsky blue. I just wanted—and yes, perhaps I needed—to look different. I know quite well what certain people, far off in the past, would say, but I don't have to care. I've never considered this color before, but it looks good. And if it hadn't—well, it only lasts for a month.

When I looked in the mirror this morning, I was white, actually paper white, instead of just dramatically pale. But I looked normal enough, and that is what has to matter.

Anyhow. I can return to thinking about, finally, getting a pet—since I live in a flat where I can actually have one. That old lady has two well-bred, rosepink, and star eyed pittens, but she didn't permit her tenants to have any pets, even ones that wouldn't oh dear, oh my, _shed_ in her flats. I've only just started to look for a cat. A free bred one, a real one.

Yes, that means I'm not interested in those engineered animals, the ones that are pretty, docile, and have stubs instead of actual claws. I'll leave that to people like my maternal unit, my maternal uncle, and the women and little boys of House Darsk.

Oh, and since I mentioned that parent I won't, as I wrote some pages, talk about here, she commed me last night. I don't need to say I did not tell her how I spent, or wasted, the last week. But she didn't decide to notice anything. She wanted to know if I'm going to come visit them when I have my four (very much paid) days off for Empire Day. And I have considered it. It has been over six months since I went back—

But I've written enough for now. I think I shall go out (in that one black dress I haven't worn for a while, and which won't smell like my bed) and get something to eat. I have a novel on my datapad that I'm halfway through, and I will hope no one I know sees me. While I might be better, I don't feel like going through the motions of being nice right now.


	8. Chapter 8

I went out to the public gardens today for the first time in (even though I don't want to believe it) almost a year. But I had an earlier shift today, and when I left the archives, I had the whim to go, and I decided to do so that moment. It was warm out today, with the sort of pleasant, fursoft sunlight I can tolerate, and the first flowers have come out. I walked along one of the nature paths in the forest-garden. It smells like the stream whispering out through the trees, and the sun-blushed leaves. It might not be actually wild, but it's the closest I can get. I know this is what my father wanted to find on the surface, and why he has stayed here.

The sky had started to fade when I returned to the main path. I stopped at the café stand and bought a black soda-fizz drink. When I looked up into the sky, and away from all constant, talking people, I could just make out the knife-thin edge of one of the moons. It was still the white clean color of the sky.

Then several girls came past, so closely I could smell their rainberry lipgloss. They had just burst into a shiver of giggles, and I didn't want to make out what they said. They were both little, and knife-thin, and wore matching rosepale sundresses, and had the same ratted curly black hair. I managed not to sneer—or worse still, to jerk back away from them.

Once again, I have to remind myself how to act normally.

They don't have to, if they are like the girls they reminded me of, who I knew years ago in secondary school, because they just _are_.

After that, and after I finished the drink (and then had to find a public fresher, since I did have an iced caf during my work break, but oh well), I stopped at the feline shelter Minnas told me about. It's only across the avenue at the north end of the park. I filled out a few forms. But I shouldn't write any more about that quite yet.

Then I returned here to my flat, to the flat of love. Ha, ha. I was tired, but not to a slow thinking, drooling extent. After I had dinner, I moved some of the empty boxes and storage bins into the telbun's room. Well, I don't need a guest room, and I did have to put them somewhere out of the way. It only took a few minutes.

* * *

Perhaps it's because I had several drinks tonight, but I will I do know, and I know very well, why I didn't destroy this journal. And I wanted to—if only for several dull, cringing moments when I woke up at the beginning of the morning. It was almost like that time when I was nineteen, and I did destroy all my writing. It wasn't enough to delete the files. I had to rip up the paper-flimsy copies I had into large fluttering snowflakes, until I had blisters on two of my fingers. I've never written those stories, those _things_ , again. No one I have known since then knows, or would believe, that I ever could have.

I don't—I should mention to reassure the record—wish I had kept any of it. I'm sure that I wouldn't be able to endure reading it now.

But I have learned since then not to destroy anything I can't replace.

Oh, I should not have had that second drink (the ruby-red one with too much Ronay gin). I don't want to write something else I'll regret as soon as the words are real, hours before I wake up and regret it again.

I will that while I didn't technically like the underwater-lit, ohsovery trendy bar Lea insisted we should go to, I didn't mind the experience. I knew what my lines were. And I was reminded, once again, that I'm not meant to be celibate. I will have to look into that.


	9. Chapter 9

Roderick came looking for me in the Danu reading room this afternoon, only an hour before the end of my shift. I had gone there to return a book I was consulting, and then I went on to look around (and avoid the woman typing a pile of notes into her datapad). I'm familiar with most of that part of the collection, but there is always a book I haven't noticed before. I was distracted with the whisperecho voice inside my head, and I didn't know he was there until I turned around and saw him. He had his dreadlocks done up with tiny bell-clicking beads, and he wore iron-grey velvet trousers, and these _boots_.

I don't know how he does it. Gets away with it, I mean. And Andraste can wear that mauve silk dress that shows off her new raw-sore tattoo, and artfully overdone limon makeup, with her black lipstick and pierced lip.

D. hasn't said anything to me, but I can tell she doesn't approve of my blue hair. She has mentioned—in this forced teasing voice—the tiny diamond stud I have in my nose. There might not be an actual policy against it, but it isn't (oh dear, oh no) professional. But she doesn't so much as notice Roderick or Andraste.

But anyhow, Roderick brought up that time I had asked him if he had noticed anyone wandering about near my desk. I hadn't expected that—it wasn't that long ago, but I haven't mentioned it again, and I wouldn't have thought he would remember. He had been reminded of it only this morning when he was coming back from the tech center, and he overheard a man asking D. about me. Apparently, I was away on that one errand at the time.

D. has a policy of never giving our personal information, so I know he didn't learn anything (else, that is) about me. Roderick left before he heard what the man said next, but he did notice that he left through the main entrance within the minute.

He was also able to tell me that he had never seen this man before, but he looked well-off, perhaps (and he leaned in with a smirk I recognized and understood) enough to be an _aristo_. He had that glossy-smug, capitalist look. I don't know what to think about that—but it won't change that to worry and fret, and yes, fine, _obsess_ over it.

Roderick and I were walking back through the archives by then, and that was when we saw that telbun who comes in on occasion. The _lady_ who owns him is known for going about with her two Hapan guardmaids. I've seen them, though only (and thankfully) once. He has brought several children with him before, a little girl with ink-black hair and her matching brother—but today he was alone.

I know that telbun has used the archives since I started this journal, and I'm sure there was one time when I almost wrote about him. But it's difficult to see telbuns, and even harder to remember them when you do. I can't quite (even though I'm sitting on the smooth blonde-pale wooden floor in the telbun's room) remember him even now, only hours later.

Roderick looked over to the side, almost casually, before he could see the telbun. I don't think he had even realized he has gone that. All the men here do that. That telbun might have noticed, but he would be used it to—and perhaps he even prefers it.

He walked past in his usual meekly-careful shuffle in those wounded-red robes he wears, his hat pointed towards the floor. He has never asked me for assistance, but then, since telbuns are supposed to be stuffed full of education, he wouldn't need it. He was so close that, for a dragged slow second, I knew he smelled like velvetdust and warm sandalwood. It should have felt strange, and wrong, and I don't know why it didn't.

But I don't need to have an answer for that—or that aristo Roderick saw. I'm leaving to see my parents in two days, and that is a good thing. Oh, it might be a very good thing.


	10. Chapter 10

There wasn't much to do at the archives. But then, it is the day before Empire Day, so I didn't expect many new and ancient acquisitions fresh from the hyperspace transport. The University has already shut down, so there weren't any students with wild eyes and deadlines. The postal service is also closed (as I learned only after I got there), but then, they are always the first to close. They did have a picture of the Emperor on display that kept baring its grey grave marker teeth in what I think was intended to be a smile. But I won't go on about that. I don't need to have a special, unannounced visit from a morale officer.

Anyhow, it might be almost Empire Day, but there were still patrons wandering in and out of the library for most of the day. The brown bird woman was amongst them—but Andraste had to listen to her flutter through her instructions.

I had just turned to return to my desk, making certain I looked too preoccupied, and too haughtily mean, to assist anyone, when I saw Erienne. He must have only just arrived, because he was talking with the woman at the sign-out desk.

I gave in to my worst instincts and stepped back to watch him. Of course, I did have a comm conversation with him last week, but I haven't seen him in person, at the archives, for several dragged out months, and I hadn't known to expect it. He nodded at the woman, and pushed some of his loose, gloriously messy hair back behind his ear. Then he turned and saw me, and I felt my mouth move into a smile.

Andraste smiled at me while the bird woman labored over a request form. _Oh that Erienne_ , she said once. _It's too bad they can't all be like him_.

It seems obvious, and trivial, to mention that Erienne is beautiful. I noticed that the first time I saw him, when he approached my desk. He kept letting his long barkbrown hair fall across his face, and I thought (and I understood) he might be shy. It has turned out to be more complicated. He has dark cat-sly eyes, like another man in Aina's poems, and graceful, dramatic hands. Oh, I am still surprised, if happily so, that I have seen him naked.

Today, he had come to consult a book of historical essay-poems from Naboo. He does have somewhat of an interest in that world. He doesn't actually need me to assist him, but he does like to discuss varied literary opinions. He must have been a scholar once, if only back in the past, though he has told me he isn't with the university.

Since D. is already off on her holiday, we had the chance to socialize. The other patron in the arc hives, one of the university adjuncts, minded her own business. Oh, and he does like my blue hair. He made a reference to some night-goddess on Alderaan.

When I saw him through the dark air of that bar, he was sitting with a girl with grass-blonde hair and a plain potato face smiling in a fireworks glittering dress. Later, when we were wandering out in the park, N. had to say he must have a preference for blondes, but I think that was a coincidence. He still saw me, and I think he smiled.

But I had to blink to look back at him, and I'm not still certain. Then Lea wanted to dance, and she pulled me over to sway with her. I had to lean in to hear her as she screamed over the hard pounding music. When I looked back for him, he was gone.

But of course, I spoke with him only the next day. I don't have to worry about sleeping with him—since obviously, I already have. It just happened, naturally and happily, after I ran into him at the university square. I didn't have to figure out which rules to follow. But that was once, and seven months away in the past, and I would like to do it again.

It could happen. Before he left, I gave him a note, taken from the paper I use to write all this, and he put into his frockcoat pocket. I don't need to remind myself what I wrote. It should distract me at my parents' house—and I might need that during the hours I'll spend in the room that is still my bedroom, with the rose-pink carpeting my mother had installed the week after I left for university. She doesn't like to wait.


	11. Chapter 11

So it turns out the slum girl my parents hired on, who I know I mentioned in here pages and pages ago, has moved in with them in order to be hard working, loyal, and sweet full time. I found that out today, though it happened nearly a week ago. I don't need to say how the maternal parent feels about this. The girl is staying in that one little room off the kitchen, the one from the original house plan with an ancient door that locks with a key. It's not much, but she is still blushing with gratitude. Then again, she does come from the Draigon District, and a house stuffed with seven sibs. She must think it's a great deal.

She must be around seventeen. I'm not good with ages, but I do know she's in her first year at the tech school. She is always nice, and probably _too nice_. She has sleek dark hair, and fragile doll skinned wrists, and a little whispersoft voice.

Oh, I know, I know. The maternal unit—who has been spending her day off flitting around in this new wine-red silk dress—has delusions of having a handmaiden.

But I must have learned a few things, because I haven't made one comment.

My parents seemed happy to see me. It's hard to tell with my mother, but she did show me the newly redecorated sun parlour. She might have wanted to mention my present hair color, but she didn't. Dad had to stop by the office for a few hours (Daddy Darsk hasn't the time for days off—not even Empire Day), but after he came back, and we had the luncheon the girl had made, we went walking through the nature park behind the house.

Dad doesn't talk much (my mother said once, with one of her friends, that he is sensitive yet silent), but he did point out a few plants I hadn't had names for before, and he recognized all of the bird voices flying about. He's always been interested in that.

I had always liked wandering around the park. Perhaps it's because I have so many bad memories of my life there, but I had forgotten that. When I wasn't walking along the paths, I would sit on this one bone-white wooden bench hidden back in the forest grove. Sometimes, if I had gone there after school, I would bring along my old dusty-black datapad with several novels inside, but I don't think I ever once opened it. When I was little, I always thought I find, suddenly, and inevitably, something wonderful in there. I never did.

Then at dinner, my mother told me her oh so important news. Yes, she has been appointed to a position on the social board.

Well, her life is now complete. I think that is all one could possibly say.

Anyhow, the girl showed me up to my room. She had the reading lamp burning, and the blankets and the (petal silk pink) sheets turned over. I took a moment to stare around it after I set down my travel satchel. There are some of my old things here, including a cloud-white stuffed bear, and the row of books I inherited from one of my great-great aunts, but my mother has changed everything else. It's hard to believe I ever lived here.

* * *

I had just woken up this morning, at an early and dark hour, when my sinuses went off. And (of course) I hadn't thought to bring any pills. I had brought three holobooks I might get around to glancing through, and a pair of cute black silk knickers, but not that. My parents only keep an old tube of bacta gel in the guest fresher, so I went downstairs, with a damp bio-tissue in my fist, to look in the kitchen. The birds were already screaming out in the trees. There was a light glowing under the door, so I slid it open several tiny inches to look in.

The girl was sitting at the table with her datapad, probably reviewing notes for the test I had heard about. I sneezed. She looked up, but she must not have seen me, because she shrugged and turned back to her ghost-lit screen. I ought to have just gone in—she would have left me alone while I searched the cupboards. But I didn't.

I found a half-used packet of pills in a tea table drawer that the droid must have put there. It did get confused at times, even after my father worked on its brain. Then I waited the few minutes for my face to turn numb, and went back upstairs, and back to bed.

But while I waited to fall asleep again, my thoughts drifted, off to that time I made that loud and stupid comment in class, when Professor G. was not actually leading a conversation. It still makes me cringe in bright, glaring loathing. As I wrote last night, I have many bad (and stupid, and miserably unhappy) memories. And no: I will not make them immortal by writing them down. I have to remember it all, and that's bad enough. Most of them are from that one especially awful term in secondary school, but I don't remember ever being happy—at least, not in the way other people seem to be.

That is all true. So I don't know why it seems, when I write it down, that it's only a story, and not a particularly good one, I made up.

But it's also true that my mother arranged for my (sadly multiple) stays at the clinic, and my melancholia diagnosis, to be erased from my records. I was relieved. I don't have to worry that D. will call me into her office for a private meeting that will not begin well. No one who knows me would think it happened, because _it didn't_. And thanks to bacta—the perfect wonder goo—I don't even have any scars.

I don't know when I went back to sleep, but finally, while I was trying to decide if I should give it up, and turn on one of the holobooks, I did.

When I woke up again, sunlight was spilling through the window, and I had a dull rockhard headache. It turned out I had slept in, past luncheon, and an hour into the afternoon. But I am, after all, on holiday.


	12. Chapter 12

My father mentioned him today while we were on a walk in the nature park. He might not be my brother, but I don't have another name to use for him. I had wandered ahead of him down the path, into a cave made from the rustling-dark trees, and the girl (who had, suddenly at the last minute, come along with us) was listening to the music from her ear-buds. The trees smelled like their fresh, glaring green leaves, and the wild moon lilies had opened. It's strange to realize that this place only exists because people made it to be that way.

I had noticed that Dad seemed nervous. It took me a minute, and ages, to realize he had caught up with me. Then, after a bird (a _cloud dove_ ) cooed off in the shadows of a tree, he had said it: _You know, I saw him just the other day_.

Apparently, he has been thinking about him since they received the compensation. Too much, he said. He had always managed to accept the matter, and leave it alone, before that—but once he was nearby, in the same city, and not a far away abstract idea in K.C., that changed. Dad shrugged at that point. He's never much showed his emotions, and I don't know what I would have done if his voice had changed, or if he had _cried_.

I knew the rest: how they accepted the money—and have never bothered any of their friends, and social acquaintances, by talking about it. But I hadn't known—though I wasn't surprised to hear it—that Dad can't stand to spend any of it.

Then (and Dad paused, before he continued in his dried out voice), he was leaving his office for his luncheon break when he saw him. Or rather, he saw Gailesia Darsk walking away from her new mirror-sleek speeder, and a telbun was following after her. Dad hadn't gotten a proper look at him, but if he had, he wouldn't have seen anyone he recognized.

The training house representative told us that he looks like me—or at least, he looks like the holopicture of me that they had with his file, that was taken when I was eighteen. But I realized for the first time, only today, that Dad has never believed it.

No: there is only one thing I should call him.

His name—if you can call it that—is Darsk Gailtel.

Since I didn't have anything else to say, I shrugged, and said that at least my mother was pleased with how things had turned out.

Dad had been watching the girl, who had wandered away from us up the path, but he turned back to me, and I've never seen him look that serious. But if he was angry, he kept his voice calm when he said: _Your mother was not happy_.

Oh, he said that she had known the right pleased, bashful face to wear when the representative from the training house came to her medical center room. She knew the rules (and Dad's voice turned bitter and sharp—since I'm sure, that day, he was learning them for the first time). She knew them so well she didn't dare mention him at all. Dad has told me before, several times, that she used to be different. Maybe that was when she changed.

I knew it was the time to find another subject, and I mentioned Pallas. I didn't mention that they contacted me that once. I've begun to think that will be it. He nodded. He had heard of them soon after he was transferred to the surface offices. Apparently, he worked with a woman who was involved with them, and she hinted at a few things with him.

But he doesn't know anything I haven't thought of. They've always been a ghost-rumor, and on occasion a joke, but maybe that's what they want—

Anyhow, that was when the girl came rushing back to us. She apologized, still blushing with giggles, because she had gotten distracted talking with one of her classmates. I stayed back while Dad reassured her. We didn't talk about him again.

* * *

But (and I'm sure my mother has told him this, and more than once) he could have it worse, a great deal worse. Gailesia Darsk is a sweet, meekly-kind woman, and one who does whatever her mother tells her. I know the Matriarch must be waiting, and she won't be doing it patiently, for Gailesia to become pregnant. She told Gailesia about her telbun after she had already looked him over, and given her approval. Daddy Darsk wouldn't have been involved with any of it. He would have busy, for the same reason he always is: making money.

I don't blame my father. He could have refused to let the house representative take him—but he wouldn't have only lost his position, he would have been blackballed. They were aware that he was an off-worlder, and it wouldn't have mattered. I've known all that ever since I was old enough to reason. I can't blame the mother either.

Of course, it might not be all right. Gailesia does whatever her mother wants her to; and that could mean she is trying (as her mother's voice whisperhisses in her head) to keep her telbun in his place. But it is what my parents are going to believe.

They didn't have another child after that. I've always accepted it, and of course, they wouldn't have discussed their reasoning with me. But I don't know. I've never wanted to have children, even before that one nightmare memory—so while I'm obviously aware most people, and that would include my parents, do, I've never managed to understand it.

* * *

My father has told me how, when he stationed in orbit, he would stand at the windows during his breaks and look down on the green perfectly made garden of a planet inside the glowing blur of its atmosphere. He comes from the slums in one of the ancient cities next to the iron-grey western ocean on Chommell Major. It's so polluted that they have to wear air mask to go outside. He had read about this world when he got the engineering contract, and before he wanted, though it was only a vague daydream, to come down and see it.

When he was transferred to the surface, he got his wish. But I'm sure he couldn't have known what he would pay for it. He has never told me (and that would be because he still believes, in the superstitious, desperate optimism of the ruins, that _everything happens for a reason_ ) that it wasn't worth it. I've had to wonder over that on my own.

* * *

I just remembered, after several peaceful days, to check for messages on my comm. The mother was watching the girl dial a movie on the holonet for her nearby (since I've made it clear I want her to learn to do it herself), and I might have needed the distraction. I did not see the message from the shelter I wanted to be there, or any calls from my friends. Most of them know where I am, and that I might not want to be disturbed. But there was one text only message, and I knew, oh I knew, as soon as I opened it who had written it:

 _It was nice (yes, I know that's an acceptably meaningless word, but it works) to see you at the archives_ , it read in sharp burnt-black letters. _I should have a legitimate literary matter there soon, so I should make it happen again. I hope you're enjoying your holiday. E._

I read it over another time while the girl came in with a glass of rosetea for my mother. That's how Erienne signed the one other message he sent me, right after we had sex. I don't remember every single word of it, but I don't have to. He said he would be away (out of town, and possibly even off-world), but he wanted to see me again, and _quite soon_.


	13. Chapter 13

I just wrote back to Erienne. And while I tend to be verbose (I will write paragraphs and paragraphs on my way to the point—and I did just that in that last message I sent him), this time I only wrote a few sentences. It's actually shorter than his note, _and yet_ , it took me several hours at the least to write it. I sat in the velvet-plump couch in the sun parlor and wrote, and then deleted one version after another. The mother didn't disturb me, but I wouldn't have much minded if she had. Every word I wrote looked clumsy and wrong on the screen. I didn't know what I wanted to say.

It shouldn't have been that difficult. I shouldn't have worried and fretted until my head was full of fluttering white leaf moths.

But I finally decided what I had written would have to do, and sent the missive flying into dissolved molecules across the holonet to Erienne's datapad. I don't know what he's going to think when he reads it.

Then I came back to the pink room, and fell down across the bed. I thought back on that one time we had sex. When I told him I had never had multiple orgasms before, he said he would see about changing that. I would learn to believe him. He had his nipples pierced (only recently, he admitted) with silver hoops, and well.

Anyhow, dearest, lovely diary, it was great. But I can only remember it now. After another few minutes, I got up. My parents were indulging in another holofilm downstairs, and I decided to go out on another walk in the nature park. That might help.

* * *

It started raining earlier, just as I returned from the nature park. There was a shaking of thunder off in the distance, and then I felt the first pin-prick drops. It turned, suddenly fast, into a huge shivering-static curtain as it pounded down, the glasshard drops bouncing off the patio in the mother's garden, and I can still hear the thumping off the roof in the dark. I'm in the pink room, with the holo murmuring—and I found a barely creased page of flimsy in one of the desk drawers so I could write about this.

I just heard it again. It sounds, though I'm still not certain, like a kitten-pitched mau, nearly lost inside the rain. I've looked out the window, but I couldn't see anything—only the shaking darkness, and the trees thrashing inside it.

I could go outside and look for it. But it's too dark out there, and there won't be much light from the few visible stars, and the hovering lights in the shipyards as they orbit the sky. I would never be able to see it—and it would not come out of hiding.

I feel empty, as though I have a rat-chewed hole inside my chest—as though it's still that one time when I found the straw pitten, and that campus security guard was too, and so pleased to tell me there was nothing she could do. Oh, there is always nothing we can do, right, and _you just happen to like it that way_ -)

Of course, my parents have both been asleep for hours. I've been able to forget that for most of the night, living with my parents is like living alone. The girl is back in the Draigon visiting her mummy and the seven moon-eyed siblings. I might not know how to talk to her, but if she were here, she would tell, if I asked, if she had heard it.

The cat seems to be quiet for now. I can only hope it found a place to stay inside for the rest of the rain. I've already proved I wouldn't be able to save it. [1]

* * *

It was greydamp and cold when I went outside this morning, as cold as the people who made, who designed, this place allowed. The trees in the garden were slumped down, and a few teardrops of rain splattered down into my face. Oh, I could say that I had gone out because I knew, somehow, deep down, what could happen, but I was just restless and aimless. And I've learned the dull way that feelings are only that. The air smelled like cold creekwater as I walked along the mudsticky path behind the houses, and my eyes had that swollen-raw feeling as though I had been crying. But it was only my sinuses.

This was the morning, dear and understand diary, that I found my cat—and not, I should say first, in the way I would have thought I would.

I was thinking about something I can't remember now as I walked along, and entered the garden through the back gate. The girl had just come in from the street, but she would not have seen me yet. She had just unlatched the side gate the neighbors use when the white kitten burst out of the bushes, and raced out between her ankles, and into the street courtyard. She gave a little dormouse-startled shriek.

I didn't, but it was over a second before I believed I had seen it.

The cat had stopped, and was staring back at us. Then she squeaked—and I knew, oh I thought anyhow, that this was that cat I had heard during the night. She turned and trotted on towards the guard wall of trees near the nature park. The girl looked over at me, and there was nothing to say before we went following after the kitten.

As I walked, and nearly hurried into a run, up the footpath towards the trees, I couldn't know that I would find her another time. The wind smacked my face, and I pulled the sleeves of the dried-stiff black jumper I was wearing over my hands. And she wasn't there. But when I turned back towards the house, she was sitting in side yard. She looked back at me, and at the girl, and squeaked. She didn't burst away when I approached her, in the most carefully slow way I could manage, and when I caught her up in my arms.

She was light, but squirming-strong. She may have been outside in the rain smashed trees during the night, but her fur was still dry. Cats are like that.

When my father returned—he had to go up into orbit to oversee the progress on some new ship they're all obsessed over—she had already explored and sniffed the entire house. She had left rain-gritty paw prints splattered on the pink room carpet. The mother hasn't, thank goodness, or something else, commented on that yet. The girl offered her a dish of canned meat chunks, but she only sniffed at it. Apparently, that's normal enough.

We have already taken her to the animal health clinic—where we saw an actual human vet. Animals don't take to droids. The kitten doesn't have any unpleasant diseases, and overall, she is _just great_. The vet reassured me that she will eat properly once she calms down. I don't remember much about how cats work, so I hope she's right.

Oh, and she has black and tan ears, and a long faded-tan spot on her back like the bloodspot, the endless, howling hurricane on Rasapan, and sunshine yellow eyes. She talks in a constant little squeak. I don't know how she got into the garden, but she isn't wild. After all, she allowed me to see, and then catch, her. But I don't know that she is exactly tame either.

* * *

Dad has taken to call the kitten Kazoo. I don't know where he thought up that one. The girl calls her Alba—the word in an old dead dialect for white. But I have decided (while I watch her sleeping on the sun room couch, or lapping from the water bowl I set up) to call her Philomena. Yes, after Philomen Eyre. It seems only right—after all, the only writing I will ever be responsible for is this heap of paper that has turned into a journal.

I went to visit Aoné and the husbands this afternoon, so they were the first people to know all this. Lea just sent me a comm. message, so I think I will tell her about the kitten, about Philomena, next. I still have to practice with the name. It hasn't quite stuck yet.

* * *

[1] _This entry was written on a separate flimsy, which was found folded in half and tucked in between the last two pages of the diary. The considerable difference in tone from the proceeding and successive entries, and nearly illegible handwriting, indicate the journal author wrote it in a moment of weakness she later regretted . It was, for those and other reasons, one of the many entries Mirella Antilles cut in her edits. I have included it, in its proper place in the narrative, for the first time in this edition._


	14. Chapter 14

When I went to bed last night, Philomena (and I'm still working on calling her that, as though I can hear the echo of her true feline name, and I don't even believe in that) was sitting underneath the bed. I could just make out the full moon glow from her eyes. She was on the bed when I woke up several hours later. I could just make out the glow of her fur in the gloomy dark shadows. She looked up at me, and then returned to licking her foreleg.

She was gone when I woke up again for another morning. I might have started to worry, because we all know I'm good at that for a reason—but she passed me on the stairs only a moment later, in a flashed lightning whipped streak.

Perhaps the girl should call her White Lightning. She's taken to calling her Snow, though it isn't as though she would have ever seen any.

Oh, and I found out that Philomena went into my parents' room during the night, and woke my father up when she attacked his feet with her little razor-flash claws. He related this to me, in this bemused voice he uses sometimes, when he was home for his lunch break—while Philomena was sitting on his lap.

* * *

I'm back home, or at least, back in my flat. I couldn't take the airbus, since (of course) they don't permit animals, so Dad had to give me a ride. She didn't like it, _especially_ after she looked out the window. Then her squeak turned into a howl. Once we were inside, she rushed through all of the rooms, and then dropped on my bed and went at her own tail. It's odd—I've only been away for less than a week, not enough to be a proper holiday, and yet the flat has changed. It was cold when I first came in, and it smells like lilac blossoms. The furniture, and everything else, are all mine, but it doesn't feel as though I've ever lived here.

But I've ignored the feeling, and it has been fading away. I haven't unpacked, but I have put out a bowl of silver-bright water, and a matching bowl of food, for Philomena.

Oh, and I will admit I watched, with fond relief, Philomena trot up and eat several bites of the food, and then lap at the surface of the water. She's resting on the chair in my bedroom now, and I'm going to read one of the novels I brought, and I am not going to think about the hours of work I have tomorrow, or whether my blasted comm. will start chirping.

* * *

Well, I'm back at work, and back at my desk. And yes: writing on this sheet of petal-pink flimsy I bought during my break. D. has been at her annoying, patronizing, smug worst. I helped her out by saying something too stupid to save here. Oh, and that happened before I learned that my hours for the next month have been cut down. I should mention that the new hire—a girl with sleek dark hair and glass-dull eyes, who (and I only quote Andraste here) is still have difficulty with her first language—has no such problem. Blast it and fuck it.

They just didn't waste any time. I could go on, but I see a lecture assistant from the university has just walked in, and she looks as though she expects me to help her.


	15. Chapter 15

I had a dream, and the first dream in weeks that wasn't gone when I woke up from it, this morning. I was walking through a forest, on a footpath knotted with roots, underneath a crowd of dark towering-gaunt trees. It had only just rained, and the grass, and the long sewing needles on the trees, were a bright burning green I had to blink at. I wore my silk-thin black winter raincoat, and my shoes were splashed with mud. I had been walking for a while, towards the house hidden back inside the trees nearby, only moments, down the path.

It was (I remembered, since I had been there before) a small black house with a pointed roof and old, old glass windows. Someone was waiting for me there—and while I knew who it was while I was living inside the dream, I don't know anymore. When I looked up, there was a ragged forested mountain range looming up into the cloud-blurred sky.

It must resemble (like that mountain top drowned in waves of snow) a place I've actually been to—it was too familiar, and too exactly detailed, for me to have only imagined it with the snap-buzzing nerves in my brain.

But it doesn't matter. Maybe I went there once when I was little, or maybe I only saw it in a holofilm. That place is too impossibly far away for me to ever find.

* * *

Lately, I've been thinking about this one poem by Rois Meek (and yes, dear journal, that would be Philomen Meek's sister) called "Infinity." Perhaps it was just that dream, but I looked it up my huge rambling volume of ancient poetry after work today. Philomena went after the pages as I turned them, all fierce eyes and smacking tail, and I had to distract her with her toy, the stuffed dormouse with a tiny squeaking bell for its heart, before I could read it. I had remembered that it had this calm, echoing-away feeling. It does—and more than that, the whole tone is sad, a dulled-quiet, accepting melancholy.

(But I might only see that because I have that tendency myself. I can't seem to be happy even when I should, when I know I have every reason to be. I seem to hide it, but it isn't an accomplish to lie to people, when you're telling them what they want to believe.)

* * *

All right—I'm going to stop right here before I write anything else I'm going to regret, and obsess over, for months of the future. I might still think that sort of thing, but I don't need to preserve it in writing.

* * *

Philomena is sitting on the windowsill right now. She has the tip, and only the top, of her tail moving in a blinking twitch. She has been running around the flat in wild-eyed, leaping bursts, and then she comes to a sudden halt to groom her dainty evening glove forepaw. It has been grey and damp outside for most of the past few days. The aristocrats won't like that, but the park workers will. I would say more, but I should left for work minutes ago, and the ink in this pen (or this stylus, as they would say on the mysterious worlds of the mysterious unknown regions) is fading. It only has a few short paragraphs left in it.

I know, I know. There is nothing more dull than equipment failures in a story, except perhaps the successes. I just went and wrote about it anyway.


	16. Chapter 16

Oh—and just when work has been going so well, one of the Hapans came in today. She stalked in, wearing a dark bloodsilk dress with a breathlessly locked corset, which is odd for a guardsmaid, but (even if you only believe an iota of the gossip) normal for Hapans. I don't know why she was there, but I have a feeling she wasn't looking for a novel to add to her datapad. She did stop in front of the shelves, and she even took out a holobook, but she only looked haughtily smug, and oh yes, peevish, as she glanced through it. D. stayed back out of her way, and everyone else was waiting for her to leave to begin whispering.

She did look over at me. I made myself look back, without the cringing and sniveling smiles she would have expected, that she and the other one are used to.

She is supposed to be beautiful, but she isn't. She may have glorious heaps of golden-red hair, the color I can only achieve with dye, and perfect flushed white skin, and perfect tits, but she isn't. When I looked back at her, her eyes were blank. They were the pale raingrey of the sky, or an old glass window.

Perhaps it really is true: the Hapans aren't human, not like me or anyone else.

It's occurred to me that I have never overheard what their names are. It also occurred to me that is because no one knows what they are.

After she had waited another few minutes, and glared at another holobook, she turned and walked out. A man, one of the usual patrons, gave her a stupid and hopeful smile as she went past him. She seemed to ignore him at the time—but now, when I think back on it, I realize she didn't see him at all. I had a numbed floating feeling when I sat back at my desk, and I was actually relieved when someone came over with a question.

When I got home, I ran into one of my neighbors in the courtyard, the one middle-aged woman who is supposed to be some sort of artist. I've only spoken with her a few times, in passing, before today, so I wouldn't say I know her. Anyhow, she told me that a man had been there yesterday to see me. She had overheard him talking to the woman who manages the maintenance droids—who, I should add, didn't think to let me know about this.

Oh, and yes, she thought he looked like he might be an aristocrat. It has to be the same man who was looking for me at the library, the one I haven't yet seen. I haven't forgotten him, but I had begun to think nothing else would happen. Now, I don't know what to think.

* * *

I woke up during the night, when it was nearly morning, into my bright moonlit room. Liin is swollen nearly full, and Ronay is a fingernail sliver behind it, though I could only see the tall trees of the streetlamps from the nearby window. I lay there in the middle of my bed until I was wide and brightly awake. I must have been off wandering inside a dream, but it was already, and completely, gone. Philomena came leaping and glowing up onto the bed, her ears fluttering like some strange alien moths. She made a short knife-sharp squeak, and I pet her thick puffy fur, and scratched her jowls. She brushed up against my back, and then, that was when I realized I did have to get up.

Philomena followed me into the fresher. When I came back, I didn't bother to try to climb back down into sleep again. I sat down on the floor with the ancient poetry anthology, and I did read through several of the poems while Philomena watched me from her place on the corner of the bed, and the chrono ticked away the minutes.

I don't know when I noticed that my comm had that telltale party lights glow. It turned out that Erienne had left me a message only within the hour. He did tell me that once that he has difficulty sleeping sometimes. I think, anyhow, that's what he said.

Oh, I did think about what I wanted to write before I responded, but I only took five minutes to actually do it. Obviously, I was awake as well. Later, when I was back in bed in the moonlight, with Philomena sitting on my feet, I thought: _Maybe I'll hear from him next month_.


	17. Chapter 17

Once again, there isn't much I can write about. Or perhaps I should say there isn't much I will want to remember later. (Yes, I found out why Stupid Girl—who was telling D. about how very drunk she was the other night—has more hours than I do. She's good with the patrons, and I tolerate them. I've had to admit that I was stupid to think this job was actually about, gasp, shock, awe, the books. It's about people. Stupid people. Anyhow.) I still have fulltime hours, so I am competent, if not friendly, at work. I come home.

Today, Celina wore this pin made from old rusted-bronze chrono parts from that dig in the southern pole ruins. It's very ancient, but worthless. It tick tick ticked like a dormouse's heartbeat when she showed it to me.

The man, the aristo, hasn't returned to find me. I can't imagine, and I have thought it over, who he could possibly be. Most of the time, it doesn't seem bad, or even quite real, but I know it can't be good if an aristocrat wants to see me. It never is.

It's only too bad that if he does return, and this time he succeeds in crossing my path, I wouldn't be able to handle him with the witty and lazily calm dialogue of a holo heroine—or if you believe that biography of Melpomene Swan—actual life. Oh well.

* * *

Erienne had to leave town for a while on personal business. Yes, I did get to see him before he left for the shuttle station. Perhaps I'll know what to write about it someday, in the near future, but right now, I don't think I will.

* * *

But (since I just surprised the little bird woman by giving her a sincerely sweet smile) I shall write about something nice. Philomena has the best fur. It's so soft and thick and rumples into ocean waves when she grooms it, and it has this clean, wild, and fearless scent. She likes to have her back scratched. I don't know what to compare her purr to—it sounds like a purr, not a speeder engine. She comes trotting out of my room to meet me, with a series of little girl pitched, demanding squeaks, when I arrive home.

She does like to play, with frenzied, savage attacking kicks, the stuffed black bear I have with its own plastic claws. I think she wants to go out into the world she watches from the windows. It is her nature. I'm going to have to think about that.

* * *

Some people take their wulfhounds, or even their specially bred amethyst eyed land-ducks, for walks in the park. I take my cat for a walk. Though it would be more accurate to say that she goes along for a walk with me. I took her for the first time last week (during which nothing else I can remember now happened) and she loved it. She was cautious at first, while she sniffed the air to see what other animals were around, but she loved it. She loved it even more when we returned the next day, and the third time. She stays around me on the paths, though she will leave to leap upon a tree. I would suppose cats are like that.

She hasn't killed anything, but she lived outside, so she must know how. She must have gotten at least several of the rat-drebis in my mother's garden.

While we were at the park today, I met this woman who came up and talked to me near the café stand. I wouldn't know how to do that, but she seems to be good at it.

She has pale brown skin and crooked eyebrows, and has her warm brown hair done up in a bun with several drafting-pins stuck through it. She wore a greywhite work coverall, so I supposed she's on one of the crews at the land speeder plant. It's within easy walking distance, and she did mention that she was on her break.

Oh, and Philomena scratched my left arm when I picked her up to bring her back into the building, but bacta gel takes care of that sort of thing. I don't even wish to complain.


	18. Chapter 18

I had one of my days off from the archive today. So I don't need to say how I felt when I woke up, when it still so early the light from the window was like icewater, to hear the buzz snarling at my door. I would have ignored it, but then, after only a moment long pause, it came back with several blastershot bursts, and I went, or rather, stumbled to the door. The girl on the other side had these violet candy purple eyes that might have been contacts, or might have been droid made implants. She gave me a knife-flicked smile as she took a small note, an actual _paper note_ , out of her messenger bag.

Oh, I knew (while I stood there with my static-sticky hair, in my old red silk dressing gown and dingy stockings) who she had to work for. She wore the same night-blue wool uniform the Darks' drivers always have. I was actually (of all the emotions) relieved.

After I had read through the note, I considered ignoring it. I couldn't forget what it said, but I could do that much. But then I went back to my bedroom to get dressed, in that black frock I've had for several months, but hadn't worn yet—and then soon, too soon, I was arriving at the entrance to the Glass Moon just as the sky dissolved into rain.

I had only been there once before for tea, during that one school trip when I was twelve. And no: I won't go into that. But I'm not twelve years old anymore, and since I had made the decision to go there, it wasn't so bad. I arrived nearly thirty minutes before the time the aristocratic member of House Darsk had specified, the one that would fit into his terribly busy, worlds shaking schedule, so I waited near the fountain in the main hallway.

It was crowded with people there for the morning tea upstairs, and I think one of the social clubs was having their board meeting. None of them stopped long enough to see me. The water fell with a shaking bright roar into the pool, over and over again, and I tried to do what people have always told me to do, and _calm down_.

But I was still nearly ten minutes early when I went down the hallway to one of the smaller reading rooms. It was lit with a discreet white lily lamp in the corner, and the books glowing on the shelves, and it smelled like velvet fur from the carpet. The Glass Moon is one of the oldest buildings in the city, and the windows are still made from actual glass. The rain had turned into a shivering grey silk veil by then, and I could only just see the hedges at the reception garden. It's the usual weather for the rain season, but the aristocrats didn't arrange it, so someone was not pleased.

There was the constant sound of footsteps out in the hallway, and I had tensed up with nerves—but only for the first several times, when the person continued on past. I thought of making a discreet escape. I wanted to know why I was there, and get it over with.

I had only just gone over to the bookshelves (and yes, diary, I meant to reorganize the whole thing in my head for fun) when a man came into the room, still talking on his comm. I watched him with what I hoped was a haughty glare. He wore a primly neat dark suit with a snowlace collar, and these little matching black shoes.

He had pale honey-brown hair, and paper white skin, and he wore these little glaring-mean eyeglasses on his nose. I could just smell his tastefully musky cologne.

He finished his call with a few more sentences, and then closed his comm. together with a snap. He looked at me for the first time, and twitched his mouth into a smile. He had ice pale eyes that were almost blue, and almost white.

 _Oh he has his telbun's eyes_ , they must have said over him with a sigh.

Of course, I had known who he was almost straight away. I hadn't seen him, or even thought of him, in years, but I remembered now. He was Gailesia Darsk's husband.

* * *

I saw him for the first time when I went to one of the northern continent-islands on Delaya for my school holidays, and he was staying at the same forest resort. I was fourteen, and he would have been twenty. He was still at university then, and he wouldn't meet Gailesia for another three years. I might not have been a little girl anymore, but he was still years too old for me to be interested in. I can't say that I ever properly, officially met him. But I would see him while I was out walking through the maze of paths through the forest, through the shadows sprawled out under the towering fur trees. I think that must have been the forest I saw in that dream I wrote about—but I digress.

Then one day, I was walking back to our cabin with Druella and Verity when he came towards us on his way into the woods. He wore a thick black overcoat, and he had his then long, glowing, glorious hair tied back with a silk ribbon. He nodded, and I managed to nod back, before he walked on. After several minutes, we all burst into smirking giggles. I would never see him that close again.

But that was nearly ten years ago. He isn't too old for me anymore—and while I know, oh I know, I shouldn't care about that, I have to admit that I do.

So then he (and I don't think I can write his name down here quite yet) asked me if I wanted to go up to the tearoom. I had only managed several sips of iced mocha before I left my flat, but I wouldn't be hungry for another few hours. I don't like to eat, or do anything else if I can help it, in the mornings.

When I told him an edited version of that, he said—while I just looked, and _looked_ , at him—that if that were the case, we could skip breakfast and get straight down to business.

After we sat in the rose-yellow chairs near the windows, he did exactly that. Apparently, one of the House Swithen engineers is convinced that the ship my father's group has been working on is based off their design. That happens all the time—but this time, Daddy Darsk listened, and sent out one of his black dogs. She had turned her attention to my father after she noticed he still has most of the compensation sitting around in his private bank account. He had found this out when the bank put a green mark on the account. When he isn't designing starship engines, he has a seat on the financial board.

He told me that no one at the yards believed my father had stolen the design. They wanted to resolve the matter in a hushed secret rush, while they still could—and he had hoped I might know something that could help.

He leaned towards me while he spoke, and he looked actually earnest. I could smell his cologne, and despite the subject matter, I had to cross my legs. His comm. buzzed once, but he didn't—to his credit, and my surprise—answer it. When he finished, he waited for me to answer through the silence while I watched the glass beads of the raindrops on the window. Then I turned and looked straight at him.

I couldn't tell him anything about the politics in my father's group. My father has only ever told me varied technical details about his work. I don't think he knows how to gossip. And I told him that my father put his part of the compensation away for his retirement. That might not be the truth—but it was the only answer he would have heard.

Then, when we had stood up to leave, he (and I should think of something to call him in here) asked me if I would like to go out for dinner with him. Apparently, he will be staying at his flat here for the rest of the week.

I considered telling him that I couldn't—because I didn't wish to be seen in public with him. I've known people who would think it's right to spit in an aristocrat's face, both figuratively and literally, because they can take it. But it just seemed too petty, too _mean._

He suggested a restaurant—which I know by name, but (for the obvious financial reasons) have never been to-and I agreed to it. He gave me his comm. number, which I have hidden away inside a file in my datapad where I won't have to memorize it.

Then he took my hand, and I touched him for the first time when I returned his grip, too hard and eagerly, and my fingers tangled with his. That was when his comm buzzed again.

* * *

Oh—and he does remember me from the holiday on Delaya. He brought it up, though only in passing, before we left. I've assumed for years, and with reason, that he would have forgotten me as soon as he had walked away that one day. He didn't so much as mention Gailesia (sweetly gentle, fragile Gailesia) and neither did I. I wonder what he will want to talk about at this dinner. It might not be about (tee hee) business, but it isn't exactly a date either.


	19. Chapter 19

Lea lost her job last week, when her company announced that it was replacing her, along with their other techs, with droids. And she decided to start off, and lament, and celebrate, her unemployment with the party I've just returned from. She met me at the door of her condo (which I can only hope she has paid off) with a little stardust tinsel crown sliding down over her eyes. The music was raging behind her so loudly that while I watched her mouth move, I could only make out several of the words. She squeezed my arm and breathed a kiss near my cheek before she ran back to the crowd of people.

I wandered upstairs and along the hallway towards the study, where the quiet and serious people (and yes, the refreshments) are. The music faded out behind me. The only light came from the bedlamp glow of Lea's computers in her bedroom.

I filled one of the silver (yes, the same silver color as a protocol model's skin) plate with some of the poultry chunks in a glossy red sauce that looked to be Rodian, and several of the little _Kuati_ cakes, and poured a glass of the fuzzy rose-pink punch. I looked around while I sipped at the drink. It wasn't bad, but I breathed some of the fuzzy froth into my nose.

I didn't notice Minnas was there until I heard his voice next to me when he said: _I would like to see one of those droids find the humor in this situation_.

He was slouched in a dingy rumpled loose white formal shirt, holding a bottle of ale in one hand. His hair has grown out into garden dirt stubble since he last shaved his head. I hadn't any idea he knew Lea. It turns out that they met in a computer engineering class at the university. We watched the room while he drank his beer, and I ate several of the Rodian snacks. The sauce was so hot it burned my lips—and I like spicy foods.

Minnas shrugged when he said: _They're lucky they stayed on so long. I mean, we've only been obsolete as workers for the past few thousand years_.

I only nodded back. My drink wobbled, and I remembered to take another sip. He tossed back another gulping drink off his ale.

I've never had much of an affinity for droids, though my father does. When I went to visit him in orbit that once when I was out of school for the day, he introduced, yes introduced, me to his favorite R4 astromech. It made a series of high pitched whistles before it dashed back off down the corridor. The whistles meant something, even if I couldn't translate them—and I knew that. Our old droid wasn't meant to be clever, but it still had its own mind.

But when I look at them, I only see machines. I don't resent them—but then, I'm not going to lose my job to a droid. The board can still be, to quote Minnas, _quaintly old fashioned_. Droids aren't much with books or ideas; and I don't think they shall take up writing (though I could be wrong, and someone is laboring even now over a poet droid—and no, I've no idea what it would be called) either.

Lea showed up looking for me after a while of that. She reached up to tug her little crown back into place. She was flushed, and stupid-clumsy with ale, and she wanted to talk. I didn't have much to say, but I faked it well enough. I ate one of the white cakes, which turned out to be stuffed with rosewater cream. I listened while they reminisced about their shared tech training. And I did not tell her about my dinner plans with—since I can't write his name down, and I have to call him something—the Divine Thing. [2]

I might be willing to be seen associating with him in public, but that does not mean I want everyone to know about it.

After I finished with my second glass of punch, I told Leda I was leaving. I had an excuse thought up, but I didn't have to use it-she only nodded, before she returned to Minnas, her mouth turned into a long sighing smile. Before I left, he had reached up to fix her crown while she bumped her hip against him. I suppose she'll tell me how that went later.

Then I came back to my flat, and dropped my raincoat into a faint over the sofa, and took off my shoes. My hair still smelled like the party, like ale and burning leaves cigaret smoke. And now (obviously) I'm writing this entry.

I came home by myself once again, but that doesn't bother me. Maybe it's because I have learned the secret of how to be alone. Or maybe it's because I've begun to know that I only have to wait through several more days to change that.

* * *

[2] _The author never does reveal this man's name. However, he has been identified, through the few details she gives, as Annachie Monet, Gailesia Darsk's first husband. It should also be noted that House Monet has never made any statement denying this._


	20. Chapter 20

It started to rain only minutes before I got out of the airbus at the only stop near the restaurant. As I rushed through it towards the doors across the street, I could smell the perfume from the milk-pale blossoms that were bruised and smashed all over the pavement. I made it inside just as the rain swelled into a static roar. While the steward hovered nearby, I shook the water off my umbrella and set it on the floor before I took off my coat. I wore a midnight blue silk dress with silver water lilies embroidered on the skirt. It might be my best frock—and oh yes, it is my most expensive one. I had to look as though I belonged there.

The steward gave me the most polite little rosebud smile as he handed my coat over to a protocol droid. Oh, the mother would have loved him. And I knew how to smile (with a flickered twitch of my mouth) back at him.

The Divine Thing was already sitting at our assigned table. He watched me as I came through the room towards him, and he smiled—and for that moment he looked as though he were pleased, actually earnestly, sweetly pleased, to see me.

The server appeared only a moment after I sat down to take our drink orders. While the Divine Thing went with a rare woodstained Jutan brandy, I read over the menu. It was written in the classical form of Basic, which I hadn't read since my last year of secondary school. But when she turned to me, I had decided on a blackberry cordial.

We talked about varied trivial things until she returned several discreet moments later. My drink was almost worth what the Divine Thing would pay for it. I watched his fingers, and his mirror polished fingernails, on the side of his glass. Then I remembered to ask him why he had come to my workplace, and then my home, to find me. I should have brought that up when we at the Glass Moon—but I hadn't thought to until it was too late. He arched his eyebrows up, in what I think, now, was obvious surprise.

It turns out that he contacted me for the first time when he sent his personal messenger to my flat. He only knows that I work at an archive because it's in my official file. He hadn't even been in the city at the time.

Yes, that means I don't know who Roderick and my neighbor saw, or what his purpose might have been. I must have looked anxious, because the Divine Thing assured me that, if this man was one of theirs, he would deal with it. It was the most he could do.

Anyhow, _then_ I asked him if he had any further business with me. I tried to be reasonably subtle about it (while I don't care if I make scenes, I didn't want to have any consequences from this one), but he knew what I meant. The Darsks never do anything without a reason for it—and his family must be even worse. He told me that matter was finished, and since (he said, and I would like to believe it) he regretted bothering me with it, he had wanted to make an effort to make it up to me.

Then he moved on, and asked about my work at the archive. We sipped at our drinks, and chose our main courses, and the server brought them over to us. I went with the polar game-hen roasted in lavender honey cream with rice. It wasn't the most adventurous (or fine—expensive) dish listed in the menu, but I knew I would eat it.

The Divine Thing seemed to actually, and truly, be interested in my work. I told him, when he asked after them, about the two books of Grizmalti poetry that are the most prized (and obviously known) volumes in the collection. You know, the ones Allista Kuat Ling brought with her to this planet before it shared her name. I've only handled them several times.

Of course, I couldn't read a word of the poems. They were written in a Grizmalti dialect that was dead a thousand years ago. But they looked as though they would sound pretty. The paper rustled like moth wings when I turned through the pages.

It comes across as so very intellectual when I'm writing it down. But that wasn't how it came across when I actually said it. When I described the paper in one of the books for him, I flushed with sudden fever-bright warmth—it sounded as though I were using it as a metaphor for touching someone, for _touching and stroking him_. You know.

But the Divine Thing only responded with a teasing, yet proper, smile, and hahahaed it off. I paused to take another (gulping, nervous-shivering) sip of my drink. The glass rim was smeared, was kissed, with the black lipstick I had been wearing.

When I bumped my foot against his leg, he didn't move away. No, he leaned in closer towards me. He was wearing that same cologne, and I could see the firebug candle flames between us reflected inside his eyes, inside the tiny dark rooms of his pupils. I allowed myself to twitch my mouth into a smile.

Yes, I felt the same excited and guilty thrill I had years ago, when I saw him in the forest. Verity had been going on about something to Druella and me, and it had only been minute before I turned back to her. She smirked over at me, and then (before I had to endure her usual pinching, teasing remarks) she continued on with her story.

I wondered (only mostly idly) what his cologne smelled of. It was musky, but there was only a nightdark floral hint in it. My skirt hissed when I crossed my legs.

When he invited me back to his flat, I knew what I wanted to say. While we rode there in his hired black company speeder, I reached over and let my hand slide onto his thigh. He picked it up and kissed my palm, before he locked his fingers into mine. The rain was pounding onto the roof, like glass-hard pebbles, and I could only see him when the light from passing speeders slid over his face.

But he smiled again-and I can still hear the echo of his voice when he said that we should be certain to save something for later. He was still holding my hand.

He didn't wait for long after we arrived at his flat, and the sleek living room with the well-polished grey sophas, before he slid down to his knees in front of me and pushed the icewater silk of my skirt up to my thighs. I let my breath out in a cat-hissed gasp when his fingers twitched over me. He hadn't kissed me on the mouth yet. I would do that—when I pulled him to me, and caught my fingers in his hair, and kissed him as hard and bruising-mean as I could. Well, I had been celibate for months.

However, I did pull away to ask him (though I should probably have brought it up before we were well into the foreplay) if his cologne was enhanced with some sort of pheromone. Some of the aristos do that—though only supposedly—to better compete with the telbuns. He looked confused, but only for a second, before he denied it.

It has occurred to me since then, and especially now that I'm writing it all out, that he might have been lying—but I don't care. It isn't as though he needed it.

* * *

While he undressed, I sat on the edge of his bed and watched (and of course, he knew I was watching) as he folded his clothes up, and stacked them on the window seat. His back was the blank creamy-soft pale color of the book paper. He isn't too hairy, partly because he has light hair, but he hasn't shaved himself to a droidskin glow. I don't care for men with too much hair, especially the dark mossythick hair growing on their backs—Lea has endured that, and more than once—but I don't like that either. Anyhow, since I don't shave at all myself, I suppose that is only fair.

I won't go into describing, and lingering and fawning over, every detail. He was as good in bed as I must have hoped-when I was fourteen, and I could only see him from a distance-he would be. He wasn't quite as good as Erienne. But then (I should admit, although there isn't a point to thinking much on _that_ ) no one else is.

I could have stayed the rest of the night with him, but after several hours, I caught an air bus on the corner and returned to my flat.

There were still four hours left of the night when I came in. Philomena slunk out of the shadows of my bedroom as I checked on her food dish. I had been afraid there would only be a faint dusting of crumbs, but it was still half-full.

Today, during my one free day from work, I went to the park with Philomena. The mother has told me—in her most subtly approached, _gracious_ way—that I should get a lead for her. And I saw several other people with their animals walking at the end of one. But I don't see how it's necessary; she never went where I couldn't see her, even when she jumped on the sides of at least four trees. The sky was a stained raw grey, but most of the clouds were gone.

I still have the Divine Thing's comm. number locked inside my datapad. I did think about using, but he called me first. He only had a few hurried minutes before he had a meeting. But he wants (though he only dared to suggest it) to see me before he leaves.


	21. Chapter 21

The archives have stayed quiet today. Oh, the rest of the library outside has been busy and crowded with patrons. It is the spring equinox exams week at the university, and the students have been arriving in a needy, wing-flapping rush of footsteps. But none of them have the need to consult one of the ancient manuscripts I have to watch over (and of course: they haven't the clearance to even touch the pages) and I have been left alone. Very, nicely, alone. I have only had to endure speaking with one person—and she wanted to find the fresher.

Once I dealt with the acquisition that came in today (a thin bread-white paper novella from the late Coruscanti Empire, thousands of years ago), there hasn't been much for me to do. But I haven't written in here for awhile, and I have three more long empty hours to waste. It isn't as though I will be committing a work of fiction.

Several hours ago, I went out for lunch with the usual group of my co-workers. D. has been hiding away in her office on a holo-conference with the archivist at the K.C. art museum, and as I expected, she didn't care. We wound up going to a restaurant Andraste had heard about in the university district. And: this time, Stupid Girl came along with us. Ketzia must have asked her, but I wouldn't have thought she would accept. She only bothers to socialize with D.

Yes, I do realize that I don't actually know her. We usually work different days, and I have only spoken with her several stilted, awkwardly mean times. It isn't her fault, or her responsibility, that D. gave her some of my hours. But she has presumed to give me advice on tasks I know how to do, and I have an obvious opinion about that.

She has one side of her head shaved down to ocean-green stained stubble, and the other half still has long gleaming hair. It makes her head look lopsided. She wore wooden sandals, and a hyperchic blouse that slid down the side of her scrawny shoulder. And she does have these waifish, glassblue, staring eyes, which I noticed while she went on in her little voice about her three romantic partners, and how she has—direct quote—a _low sex drive_.

Only several weeks ago, I would have thought, and I may have gone on to say, something with a mocking sneer like: _Congratulations_.

But this time, today, I only took a drink of my spaceblack cola. When Stupid Girl arrived at a pause, Andraste said, with a snap of her eyebrows, how _Oh that is so nice for you_ , and then informed her what her preferred sex act is. It might be even be true—I don't think I know a single detail of Andraste's personal life—but she made it into a joke, and someone (and I shan't say who it was) had to laugh. Stupid Girl responded with a pinched glare.

After that moment of awkward, clenched silence, we left that for other topics. Roderick told some slight, easy antidote about the weekend trip he and his boyfriend took to the northern pole islands. Celina asked Ketzia about the status of her infant. Minnas complained about several problems with the technical aspects of the new cataloging program.

It has occurred to me again, while I'm reminiscing, that Andraste has not made one remark, or joke, about how I must have someone new since I took up with the Divine Thing, and she flatters herself on her ability to just instinctively know these things. But I won't complain about it since, this way, I don't have to put her off with an excuse.

It could be that I don't have the tell-tale rosepink burning complexion of true love, since I'm not in any sort of love with him. I should hope I know better than that.

Then in the sudden, typical way, it was behind me in the past, and I was back here at my desk, and I have written this. D. must have thought, when she came over for a _very important_ consultation, that I was working on a catalog report for the morning's novella. She still writes by hand when the whim seizes her—archivists are, after all, supposed to be eccentric.

I still have a half hour before I can excuse taking a wandering break—and I have already written up the catalog report. I should just go take out a book. Since I am an archivist.

* * *

Roderick joined me as I left work today. It was raining again, a sullen, weeping drizzle, and he puffed his umbrella up over our heads as we walked down the front stairs. He seemed a little nervously shy. I was about to mention that when he went ahead to the point. Apparently, there has been a flare-up in the discord amongst the main house yards. The boyfriend is an engineer with the local house, and while (obviously, and typically) he is under a nondisclosure contact, he has hinted at a few details. It was enough that Roderick thinks—since my own father is a lead house engineer—it could explain the man who was asking after me.

I have to admit that I was taken aback with a jerk of surprise that he had even remembered-since I mentioned it once, during a conversation I have mostly forgotten, over a year ago— that my father is an engineer. But I managed not to actually say it.

We were standing on the pavement by then. Roderick lives in a different part of the city, and he takes the airbus that arrives on the opposite side. Before he left, he leaned forward to tell me, in a darting fish whisper that I could only just hear, to be careful.

I had time to think on that while I waited for the airbus, and then during my commute as it floated through the streets. That man, who I've still never seen, is not with House Darsk. The Divine Thing has made certain of that much. He might have looked like an aristocrat, but he was likely, probably, only an agent with another house. There is always, as I wrote here only recently, some sort of conflict going on between the houses.

But this might be one of the occasions—like that time, thirty years ago in the past, when _Lady_ Ozma Kuhvault took the suicide contract, and (predictably) forced her telbun to join her in it—when it turns into a war made for historical gossip. I had nodded over at Roderick. Yes, I know (as he does, as he must) to be careful.


End file.
